Temple of Mars Summary and Analysis

In the opening chapter, Marlantes introduces a concept he calls the "Temple of Mars" that describes a spiritual state of being when a person is in combat. He opens the chapter describing a scene in Vietnam in February 1969 when he was holed up in the jungle with a man in his unit who had been shot through the chest. Zoomer, the wounded man, was alive and breathing heavily with one good lung. Marlantes listened to the labored breathing and whispered stories to Zoomer through the night, hoping to have him evacuated the following day.

The incident reminded Marlantes of one of his first experiences with death as a boy working on his grandfather's fishing boat on the Columbia River in Oregon, where he sometimes watched the salmon that lie in the bottom of the boat seeming to...